With a cast as inauthentic as the movie’s painted prop gold bars Blood Vessel disappoints.

Hailing from the land down under, Blood Vessel is the story a small group that has survived the sinking of their ship during WWII and find themselves aboard a German warship, whose crew has met mysterious and gruesome deaths. An intriguing premise the film fails almost straight out of the gate. The survivors are a collection of cliched and cardboard caricatures instead of living breathing characters. At no point throughout the films 97-minute runtime does a single character present any sort of inner life, growth, or surprising turn. They are all exactly who they appeared to be when we met them floating in raft in the cold frigid waters of the North Atlantic, presumably in the winter of ’44-’45.

The lack of care or attention to detail in this film might be best typified by the scene where the greedy, brassy, and loud-mouthed character from New York discovers a cache of gold bars presumable looted by the NAZIs from their Romanian allies. Examining the gold, he lifts the bars easily even turning in the light while grasping it with just two fingers.

Had the characters been fleshed out and developed that film’s slow pace and attempts at building tension during the first half of its runtime may have worked. A derelict and deserted ship, particularly an enemy one, would make for a rich and atmospheric setting to explore characters and conflict but if you populate it with tired cliches then the lack of action becomes a drag and not a slow burn.

While watching Blood Vessel it was impossible not to think of similarly themed and flawed films such as 1980’s Death Ship. It isn’t until the third act that the monstrous cause for the carnage that befell the crew is revealed and released forcing the characters into a desperate fight for survival, but by this time it had become impossible to have any emotional stake in their escape or victory and the enjoyment comes from predicting which horror film tropes will rule the script and its ending.

I can’t but also feel that the cinematography also fails the film. While the sequences are well shot and atmospherically lit, there is something in the crispness of the images that works against the story’s period setting.

While some may enjoy the basic monster fight nature of the film, particularly its final act and resolution, I cannot recommend Blood Vessel as a movie worth your time.

Blood Vessel is currently streaming exclusively on Shudder.

Due to me running late and a minor migraine this will have to be quick.

Sunday my sweetie-wife and I watched, via Sd Film Geeks’ monthly festival of Italian Genre Cinema, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage one of the films, along with Blood and Black Lace that established and defined the giallo genre of movies that focused on lurid tales of sex and violence.

The film centers on Sam Dalmas an American author on an extended vacation in Italy. On the eve of his return to America Sam witnesses an attempted murder of a woman in an art gallery. Due to his intervention the woman survives, and Sam becomes part of the police’s hunt for the maniac who has already killed three times. Sam investigates on his own, but with surprising police assistance and acceptance, drawing the killer’s attention and becoming a target himself endangering his own life and that of his live-in girlfriend. Eventually the killer is discovered with the genre appropriate twists and order is restored.

This film was fun to watch. The twists in the plot and the eventual revelations are mor logical than last month The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, though as with all Giallo it is important to approach the film with prodigious suspension of disbelief. Luckily this edition was subtitled and not dubbed, preserving the actors’ portrayals and enhancing the experience/ The cinematography is lush and colorful displaying the tastes that would become the signature of director Dario Argento. As a cherry on top my sweetie-wife also spotted a connection to Star Trek the Original Series. So, if you get a chance to stream this one, do so.

Death Line (AKA Raw Meat) is a 1972 British thriller/horror film starring Donald Pleasance with a cameo from Christopher Lee and directed by Gary Sherman.

When an important member of the Ministry of Defense vanishes from a tube Station Inspector Calhoun (Pleasance) starts investigation discovering that the station in question has a history of missing persons. More people go missing and one turns up murdered after being impaled by a broom handle. With the assistance of a college couple the mystery is eventually solved and the threat ended.

Death Line is a slow film taking its time to unwind and even at an hour and half it feels a bit long and padded. The concept when revealed is better suited to an hour-long anthology than a full feature film. There is one very impressive single-take tracking shot but overall the film suffers from too slow of a pace.

Pleasance has been noted for giving one of his most eccentric performances and that is well deserved. He doesn’t chew the scenery, but the Calhoun’s characterization is quite unlike the sort of the role one would associate with Pleasance.

Death Line is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of the collection 70s Horror.

I have a bit of a time crunch this morning so this will simply be a quick observation.

During the week I started a re-watch of From Beyond the second H.P. Lovecraft adaptation from Stuart Gordon following his version of Reanimator with returning cast member Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs.

While the script is far from stellar it was perfectly serviceable, at least at the start before it veered into distinctly non-Lovecraftian area of BDSM and sexuality but right from the start the film is undercut and severely damaged by its cinematography.

The scenes are well lit, and everything is clear and shop from the foreground to the background and that is the trouble. Now I do not know if this was because of some budget restraints, directorial edict or simply a stylistic choice by DOP Mac Ahlberg but it doesn’t work.

Even when the characters are supposedly in a darkened space and using flashlights the scenes are well-lit and everything is perfectly visible. There is no use of shadow and darkness of create danger and mystery in the character’s space a serious failing for any horror film. There is nice work when the ‘resonator’ is engaged and the scenes become bathed in lavender and purple as the other-worldly dimension intrudes into our own, but had the other scenes been lit more realistically, with more care to the light and shadow then the drastic change during the inter-dimensional events would have been more effective.